Worldwide air traffic is projected to double every ten to fourteen years and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) forecasts world air travel growth of five percent per annum until the year 2020. Such growth may cause degradation in safety and performance and an increase in an already high workload of the flight crew. One of the negative influences on flight safety has been has been the ability of an aircrew to visualize and avoid wake turbulence. The ability to process wake turbulence with transparent (understandable) representation on a display can significantly improve situational awareness of the flight crew resulting in increased flight safety and performance.
It is important for pilots to know the position of other aircraft in their airspace, and any pertinent wake turbulence, to ensure flight safety. Furthermore, the pilot must interpret the information provided, thereby occupying his thought processes when he may have many other decisions to make.
With increased availability of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) installations, Cockpit Display of Traffic Information (CDTI) displays can show surrounding traffic with increased accuracy and provide improved situation awareness. In the ADS-B system, aircraft transponders receive global positioning system (GPS) signals and determine the aircraft's precise position. This position is combined with other data and broadcast out to other aircraft and air traffic controllers. This display of surrounding traffic increases the pilot's awareness of traffic over and above that provided by Air Traffic Control (ATC). However, when the number of ADS-B targets become numerous, particularly in the vicinity of an airport, consideration of wake turbulence from each aircraft is difficult for the pilot to visualize.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a system and method for processing and displaying wake turbulence to a pilot of an aircraft. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the exemplary embodiments will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.